Sailing Last Mango

2-14-17     This morning Karen and I woke up at 5 AM to the sounds of rain drops hitting the Mango’s topsides and the feeling of water splashing on our head through the hatch above our bed. We quickly scrambled and in less than one minute had all windows and hatches closed and hopped back in bed just in time to hear the rain stop. Oh well, that’s cruising.   After the early morning rain dance we woke up at a decent hour and to Valentine’s Day. Here on Last Mango it’s no different. We lazily woke up lying in bed reading news and scanning FB. What a great way to start the day, the clouds disappeared from the sky and the suns energy was charging the batteries at about 10 amps. A breeze was blowing out of the east making the water sparkle like diamonds in the morning sun. I went ashore to exercise a bit and Karen talked with Mary Lynn about the days events. As it turned out Karen and ML chose to do laundry this morning and thought we’d eat a Valentine’s lunch at th...

2-7-17     Today is the day that we (Greg did all the weather work) chose to leave for the Abacos. Really the only deciding factor was weather, if we didn’t leave today we wouldn’t have another chance until next Wednesday. Another deciding factor we had not thought of was the fact that the wind picked up in the anchorage and Fracas had a near miss with an unmanned motor cruiser Great Scot. When these people played down anchor near Fracas the other day we thought it looked too close, it sure was today. Today from Mango’s vantage point things really looked interesting as Greg was quickly pulling up anchor and an hour early. Since Fracas was ready to move we made the 2:15 bridge opening and staged in Lake Worth for the 5:15 start. Fracas as seen from Mango leaving West Palm Beach. During our staging I caught a quick nap and Karen worried we were too close to a neighboring sailboat monitored our distances with other boats nearby. We were anchors up by...